Flag Football ownage

We have been dominated flag football. Or at least the first two games. 2-0 at this point, we shut out our opponents last game. I'm pretty happy with the way our team has been performing. Everyone is playing their position well and we are winning off great defense and strong field position. I do hear that our next two opponents are better than our previous two though so we'll have to practice extra hard for that.

UF football sucks. I can rant for hours on the overall performance of our team last saturday against Ole Miss. Play calling was highly suspect, OL play was disastrous, secondary gave up a few long ones (though they had been on the field forever at that point) and we had three turnovers. There is still a small chance for a MNC run (we cannot lose another obviously) and hope that we get in after we win the SEC championship. CFB has been very interesting lately and it seems as if last year was not a fluke...giants are falling (including USCw and UF) to teams they shouldnt be losing to. A ridiculous number of ranked teams lost last week and I'm sure that trend will not stop. I just pray that UF is not like last year's Cal Berkley, who was #2 at one point and then lost their next 6. UF has Arky (the worst SEC team) though this week and that should be nice and easy. I also bought my plane ticket for Jacksonville on the 31st of Oct. for the UGA game, which should be fun.

NE lost to VT in a pretty even game last sat. VT controlled the ball for 3 quarters (pathetic red zone offense) and held on to the win despite a last minute drive by Nebraska. This week with Mizzou should be interesting (perhaps a blowout).

Poker hasn't been going great, though I haven't been playing much. This is the first month that I get back on the horse though and I plan on doing at least 10k hands (hopefully more). My first DC video is up as well with decent reviews (I was meh on it, I felt I played suboptimally in some areas). Justin and I have also started our series and should get the first video done within the coming days (should make for decent content).

School has been going pretty bad. I've been skipping frequently, not studying or doing any work. As I said, I probably am going for five years (which is both good and bad) so blah. I have to start thinking about what I'm going to do for future trips as well (winter break, fall break). Haven't decided if I want to go to the PCA again. We'll see.

live poker

live poker yesterday:

hilarious logic displayed like usual. 2/5 at the horseshoe. some hands i saw-

someone raised preflop, everyone calls. flop K56. pfr bets $150 into $200 pot. mp calls $150 with $60 behind. turn Kx, pfr shoves mp sighs and calls with K4o. he says that he would have folded the turn if the other king had not come. he said that he would have been sure that his kicker was no good and would have folded. pfr has AKss and wins LOL.

another hilarious hand- super old lag opens with A4, tight guy shoves all in with 50bbs, bb cold calls the 3-bet with 100bbs, super old lag CALLS 50bbs.

flop T36 and old laggy donk calls the shove and wins vs AA/QQ LOLLLLLLLLLL.

anyways, not really too many interesting hands. i was playing really really tight due to 0 cards whatsoever in the beginning. i flatted AA from blinds to tagfish raise in lp after everyone folds to him. i typically dont like 3-betting a ton until stacks start to get a little deeper since pfrs are so large live. anyways bb called as well, flop KK8. checked around. turn 9x i bet 40 into 60 pfr calls. river 6 i dont really want to c/c at this point nor do i want to c/f (though c/f might be better). anyways i bet 60 into like 140 and btn calls and flips over AQ. nice flop check you ape.

i start slow. really ****ing slow. i raise in lp with A6o after a terrible player limps. btn calls, sb calls, limper calls. flop AJ6. i bet 80 into 120. resident tagfish wearing a ftp coat with backwards hat (young guy) raises to 210. all fold, i just jam and he sighs and calls, asking if i have aces? i flip and he flips AK. turn 9, river 9 and he fistpumps. i was about to berate but held myself and just reloaded.

i also went to the casino with 5 other friends, some of whom have never been to the casino before. they were playing the 1/3. their strategy (hilariously enough) was to double up then leave. 3 of them accomplished this task, the other two lost their stacks. i staked one of my friends and he was later able to recover slightly but still ended down $250. other friends ended up anywhere from $150-$300 while other friends ended down 200-250.

not really too many other hands. i lost a pf ai with KK to J9 for 40bbs. LOL. i won a few small pots later on, one with 87cc against a guy i knew from underground games. i opened, he called from blinds. AK7ss, he c/cs my bet. turn x check check. river 8 he check/calls and shows and ace and loses.

overall, ended down probably like 1k. it seems that i cant even beat live poker. ****ing kill me. luckily we had a fun night, went to karaoke and made my friend (attempt) to rap 'in da club'.

Updates

Hello all, sorry I have not updated in a while. Poker has been pretty gay and the downswing has approached 13k. Meh, I think this might be the worse money wise but I've had worse in terms of number of buyins. It's to be expected though, especially since the large chunk of it is in 2/4PLO. In such a variance laid game losing those 55/45s and vice versa is going to happen.

College football season is in full swing. tOSU got totally crushed, what an embarressment. Some schools bring their conference pride but tOSU just gets destroyed for every big game. I don't think Beanie would have made much of a difference with the way their lines broke. UF is looking sharp, we won a hard fought battle against UMiami. Although UM didn't have any offense their D is very good (and should be better in the future). We have UTenn this week at their place which should be fun. I expect a victory though they aren't as bad as everyone thinks. LSU/Au play this week as well, I'm rooting for the mad hatter and LSU to win simply for strength of schedule (when we play them later). Should be a really hard fought battle like last year. I bought a ticket to Jacksonville for Oct 31st for when we play UGA. I'm so pumped.

We also won our first flag football game. We've been practicing pretty hard and tonight was a nice showing of our hard work in practice. We started down 6 pretty early due to a deep ball. We made some adjustments, the biggest one being rushing only one outright and the other guarding the flat/spying the QB. All others played man (their offense was very strange, with no line and just 5 wide every time).

As far as offense, our plays didn't do a ton. We had alot of success against their pathetic zone with the line releasing. We are going to have more issues though when opposing teams have decent pass rushes against us. Might have to try more QB draws and option plays. It eventually got so bad on their end that our rushing one just totally fucked them up and weren't able to make any good decisions. Our team had 3 picks (I had a deep one after my teammate deflected it up in the air). Our tackling was pretty solid overall and we didn't have too many missed opportunities. We scored with a variety of ways, our QB rushed, some deep balls, quick outs. Can we improve? sure. But overall I was pretty happy with our performance.

UNNATURAL BITTERNESS-


We don't play for another two weeks. Have to prepare.

In other news I'm pretty sure that I'm staying a full 5 years hilariously enough. I haven't even applied for the teachers college, something I should have done 2 years ago. Pathetic. Whatever, I don't mind staying in a little longer. Though I think things will be quite depressing once all my friends leave for grander things. Currently doing pretty poorly in school, it might be a product of the scheduling (class pretty much only twice a week). Latin civs is a fucking joke, our teacher is in extreme denial on the reality of how badly the Aztecs/Incas got assraped. Also my multicultural class is lame too.

I also am about to have my DC video approved (I think?). The first one had some sound and technical problems. Once I get it approved terp and I are going to go hard on the project. I was pretty happy with this video I did, got into some interesting spots. I plan on heading home this weekend, my friends and I are planning a casino trip. Should be hilarious to see the apes in real life...what a treat. I plan on getting back into poker within the next few days, I havent played in quite some time. Meh.

I've been looking at my Europe trip pictures and realized today how much I really miss that place. It's a different outlook on life, everyone there doesn't really care as much on business or efficiency. The U.S. is different, everyone is doing something and there are always objectives to fill. I'd like to just drop out and take a one way ticket to Asia or Europe, see where it takes me. Family would probably spaz and the chances of me doing this are very slim but it's still present on my mind. Just grind out another year I guess.

Downswinging/Goals

Lame...I'm quickly approaching a 10k downswing. While I've had worse overall downswings in the past, this one is especially brutal for the sheer # of hands it's taken for this to occur. 20 buyin downswings are to be expected though, especially in a variance happy game like PLO. Have I been playing perfectly? Definitely not. I've made plenty of mistakes. Today I recognized quite a few in my first session in PLO in a bit, (places where I should have bet the turn/etc). I will continue to keep a clear head though. As I've said in the past (and still hold), I haven't been running fantastic the past few months. I don't play a ton of hands either though so this sense of time is perhaps a bit more stretched than most other players (who average 30-60k hands a month).

I did my first vid for DC the other day, it was a 1/2NL deep one on FTP. I got owned in a few spots and was 3-bet frequently by a regular (who also happened to suck out on me with K5dd on ATxdd board vs. my AK in a 4-bet pot 200bbs deep :(). Meh. He did employ a nice heavy 3-betting strategy in position though which was tough to play against. I know I've been saying it for a few weeks now but I do eventually want to get back into NLHE full time. I think that tomorrow I plan on playing a decent amount 1) not only to get my money back but 2) also get back into the game. Once my video gets reviewed I can finally start my project with terp and get our series on the road.

Our flag football team is looking fairly sharp. We played some randoms in the rec the other day and beat them with touch/50 to 25 boundaries. Unlike last year I think we'll be employing alot of quick slants and shorter throws (with a higher completion rate). Last year we did a heavy running attack with some players that perhaps weren't in the right fit. This year we have some pretty athletic people that should make for a good season (season lasts for 4 games? I think?).

Some goals I have for this month pokerwise is 25 hours. I don't expect to play a whole lot on weekends due to CFB/friends/etc. Though I think I can get more than one hour a day. This hourly should change though if I'm running good or bad or what have you. (Or if I get extra motivation to play). I do want to get back into NLHE though and I plan on playing that more so this month. All I want is a solid winning month. I'm willing to take anything at this point. Even a paltry 5k would do wonders for my confidence. I haven't had any crushing months in a while and maybe I am just a breakeven player, who knows. I also hate the way poker makes me when I'm downswinging. Poker is a pretty emotional game and sometimes I let it seep into my real life, when I'm yelling or just pissed off in general. Can't really help it I guess.

School is going meh. The Tuesdays/Thurs that I do really have school are pretty brutal. I'm majorly slacking though and need to start getting more dedicated. Still need to apply for the teachers college, etc. I'm probably just going to end up taking the full 5 years for all I know. Meh, whatever. I expect college is going to be better than the real world anyways so yeah.

College football this weekend looks to be pretty fun. I'm really just anticipating UM/UF on saturday night on ESPN (8PM EST). The Huskers play during the day and the game should be a blowout. The UF game is a pretty interesting one and I don't buy the 21 point line for a second. UM is a pretty talented team (perhaps one of the most talented) with a huge OL and two good RBs. I can definitely see a Auburn 2007 II happening again if UF doesn't take UM seriously. UF is on a 6 game losing streak to UM and that just pisses me right off. There really aren't a ton of great CFB games though this week. As for any interesting Out of conference (OOC) games, there aren't many. UF/UM is semi interesting. PSU/OSU (oregon state) is semi interesting (though OSU lost to LOL stanford). Seeing Vandy upset S. Carolina tonight was pretty amusing. Vandy looked pretty impressive in their inital opener against Miami OH and competitive tonight as well. Their D is pretty real and UF has struggled with them the past few years. Could be devastating if we lost though.

Looking now, BYU/Washington looks appealing, WVU/ECU and thats about it...third week in though expects to be one of the best saturdays this season with the armaggedon match of USC/tOSU (I think beanie is sitting out this saturday to rest) as well as many other in and out conference games.

Live Poker

Came home for the weekend, having no school is pretty cool. Though I only have one class today so not a huge victory. I need to focus more on school- my grades have dropped significantly and I have yet to even apply for the teachers college (and I'm a senior). Pathetic effort on my part. I'll get it done eventually, maybe I'll just do 5 full years or something instead of the projected 4.5. Meh.

Played live poker yesterday. I have yet to play online for the past 2-3 days. Live poker is pretty LOL typically and yesterday was no exception. After starting a bit slow I won a few smallish pots (2/5) and built my stack up to $750ish. This arrogant mexican guy who thought he was the shit sat two seats to my right. He constantly talked about how he played 100-200NL and 200-400 at the Wynn in Vegas. I thought this was B.S. for a few reasons-

-Despite saying that $500 is just 'the amount I get it in preflop', he was jubilent with joy after winning an all in. He jumped up and down screaming "SHIIIPPPP ITTTTT" throughout the room. (he limp/called with AsAd pf, flop came Q95ss and he check/miniraised then 4-bet shoved over the 3-bet and hit runner flush to beat 99). You could tell that the money mattered to this guy.

-He was terrible. That isn't to say that there aren't terrible players that play 200/400 but this guy wasn't a billionaire. He can't laugh at losing 40k like a ton of wealthy moguls. He was playing super nitty and you could tell he has some sense but not a ton.

Anyways, he doubles up through the guy to my direct left (I later found out was a 2p2per, more on that later) with said hand above. After dancing around like a retarded hooligan for a few minutes, he sits down again.

---

I raise AQ UTG, get a few callers. Flop JT4. SB checks, BB checks, I bet $85 into $120, all fold to SB (donkey mexican) who makes it $300. I jam he calls with JJ and he gets T on the turn (I had about $750 or so). He screams at the top of his lungs and raised his fist triumphantly, stacking his chips in a slow and meaningful fashion. I only brought $1100 that day (and staked my friend for $200) so I was short on cash. I went to the ATM, rebought for $500 and sought to regain my money. (He sits out and goes to eat, with other players shaking their heads at the idiocy he presented).

Some hilarious hands followed. I open 44, mega donkey calls along with a few others. He was a super calling station. Flop 723, i bet and 1 fold, he calls. turn 5x I bet again and he calls. river 6 (LOL) and I bet largeish, I think I bet like $30-$60-$130 on all streets and he makes the river call.

I overlimp JTo otb after a ton of limpers (7 or something). all checked to me on Q8A flop i bet $20 into $35 or something. mega donater calls with a shorter stack ($200ish), one more call. turn 9 he checks, I bet $65, he thinks for a moment and then jams with AK (he limped AK in the sb iirc) and he's drawing dead.

My stack is probably like $900 by now. Making a sound recovery. We are also getting shorter handed after a 3-way allin pot before of KQ vs. K8 vs. 77 on KK7cc board where one guy busted two others and then moved to the main game (ours was the feeder). Anyways I'm opening more pots and I also discover that the guy next to me (competent player, probably the only one aside from an asian nit at the other side) was a 2+2er. we talked a little about playing online and it turns out he's a poster who PM-ed me a long time ago about meeting at the horseshoe (before I was 21). Plus there aren't any other 2p2ers in Nebraska anyways so lol.

I open AT UTG, few callers. Flop TT7 with 2. $850 (SB) stack checks, I bet $35 into $50, donkey from the 44 hand jams for $95, SB COLDCALLS (HMMMMMMMM I wonder what you have????). I think for a moment and make it $330 total, SB mulls mulls and then jams, I instacall. donkey has J7 (lol), and SB had QT and I hold.

Staked friend ends up making like $250 or so, I take $75 for my cut. We left shortly after our game broke as more players went to the feeder game. LOL live poker.

CFBBBBBBBBBB

All day today...Saturdays are awesome. No other day of the week can compare in the fall. Any other CFB fanatics can agree as well. This season kicked off today, UF cleaned Hawaii out. I was fairly pleased with alot of the game but there is still significant room to improve. Some things I had gripes with:

-Penalties. UF showed its youth in the DL. True they were overly aggressive but the sheer number of penalties committed were frustrating to say the least. It's like it's 2006 all over again where we were among the most penalized team in the nation.

-OL didn't impress me as much. They had a few nice plays in terms of setting up nice runs for our RBs but they were touted to be among the best in the nation. Pass D can improve.

-Backup QBs were LOL. enough said. I don't even want to talk about them.

As I said though, I was pretty pleased. The corners and safeties played well, forcing some pick-6s and fumbles. Tebow played pretty well, I don't expect him to win the heisman as projected. He made up a very high percentage of our offense last year (perhaps due to a lack of RB). This year I hope that we are able to spread the ball around more (and namely run more). Though with the new clock rules I think offenses (alot of power running teams) will be able to control the game even moreso than before. We should be better for Miami with Percy and Spikes back. I was pretty pleased with Lawrence Marsh, our DT as well. Finally getting some pressure up front, a far cry from last year.

Nebraska won as well. Sucked because we didn't get any seats, we came too late because we were piles. Game was fun overall. NE has a pretty solid offense, running game was meh. Defense was meh at times. DL especially sucked. They have alot of work to do.

Some upsets this week. It's to be expected I suppose. VT loses to ECU, Clemson got hammered by Bama, Texas A&M loses (LOL) to some shit team. Mizzou held as did many other top 20 teams this week. Some significant headlines were Beanie wells perhaps hurt, which sucks for the tOSU/USC game (want it to be as huge as possible), UGA's starting DE got a torn ACL. Sucks ass for UWashington getting stomped by Oregon too, UW is a team I quite enjoy watching (partly because of Jake Locker as well as my gramps/parents both being UW alumni). Locker's OL got smashed from what I saw so bah.

Anyways, probably going home tomorrow for labor day, no school on monday so I'll get to catch UCLA/Tenn and do some scouting for 3 weeks from now. No poker recently either, the break has been pretty nice.

I also went to the bars tonight with a friend. An interesting event happened as well (posted in SSNL life thread too)-

okay so i met a friend at the bars tonight. she was in a group of her friends, one of which was a crazy meth addict looking guy who she met from another one of her friends. ANYWAYS

so we're talking...talking about football/whatever.

him: "yeah...i just won $280 this weekend. I bet on sports."
"oh really? that's pretty cool man. nice score."
"yeah man. A few weeks ago I loaded $300 onto pokerstars"

(cue orange's eyes lighting up, mouth cringing to a smirk trying to contain laughter)

"oh yeah? thats cool. are you up money?"

(enter him looking at me with a queer grin, super cocky and arrogant. It's like he has a super secret that he wants to let out but has noone to share it with).

"well...I'll tell you this...I bought my beamer with it." (holds up 8 fingers).

"you've made 8 grand man? wow"

"oh yeah...i ran that $300 up to 5k within a week. I play no-limit. I played $5 dollar/ $10 dollar, $1000 up front. It's such a rush"

"wow thats alot of money."

"yeah man. you don't know what its like to win a $2500 pot. (insert me saying i've won a 7k pot. in reality i held my tongue and kept smiling).

He continues to ramble, saying you can't play poker professionally because of the swings. "you could win $1000 in one hour and then lose $3000 within the next hour. I can't do it" He also bragged about him getting 200th in the sunday million for $1600, a nice $300 hourly or something. I kept nodding.

then I continued my sick game and asked if poker was all luck. he looks at me sheepishly and shakes his head frantically.

"hell no man. how do you think i ran my money up? S-K-I-L-L. you have to know what the **** you're doing. or its all just luck"

"ah okay. i always thought otherwise"

we hang out for a bit longer, we all depart shortly after, I never say a word about me playing poker. I laugh alot. I'm a sick human.

------------
maybe i sound arrogant but meh. I found it funny maybe noone else does. be good.

Updates

First week of classes went through. I don't have any class on W or F which rocks. Tuesdays and Thursdays are long though. I'm pretty pleased with the majority of my classes, though some are a real bore. Latin civs has a joke of a professor. He goes on random tangents about unrelated topics and churned through 4 different civilizations and 1000 years of history within about 40 minutes. Already a nice sign of things to come. Modern China is going to be semi-interesting but boring as well I think. Social Psych will be okay, there aren't any tests in there only papers and discussions, which is whatever. The teacher seems cool enough as well. Multi-ethnic education is pretty cool. It also has the most diverse crowd I've seen in college. I must admit I am racist to a degree (though I think only jokingly?). I'm going to have the oppurtunity to tutor another kid though in this class which I'm looking forward to. Finally I have a multimedia class which looks pretty cool, required class for teachers and a self-defense class as well. As for the difficulty of these classes, I think that China and Multi-ethnic will be the hardest. Time will tell.

Poker hasn't been going so hot lately. The variance in PLO is catching up and I'm no longer running like I was earlier this month (pretty well). I'm down about 11 or so buyins the past two days in little play. I also will not meet my monthly hourly goal which is disappointing. This month has been pretty disappointing, at least in the way I've closed it out. I feel as if my poker growth is stagnant, or I need something else. PLO was the game for me, it drove my interest and I loved playing it. But even now I can't really convince myself to play hours on end like some of my friends. I've never been good at grinding. The most I've played in a month is 35k hands and some tourneys. I've always been content with winning moderately, not gigantic by any means (especially given the volume of hands I put in). I just enjoy doing other stuff so much more. I'm also content that I did not decide to take a semester off or school off last year, as I don't know if I have the motivation or discipline to do this thing full time. I do want to travel after I'm done though. This month I probably won't make much, then again I doubt if I've played a ton more than 10,000 hands either. So whatever. I eventually want to get back into NLHE but alot of the ideas/concepts seem very cut and dry to me (at least at the limits I do play). Not saying that I'm a world crusher by any means, its just very 'fold, raise, fold, raise, etc). So, this month, very disappointing in the way I finished and hope I play better next month.

I plan on making a video within the week for DC. terp is on vacation so our project will be started when he gets back. Looking forward to it though, I don't think there's been much content on said subject(s) in the realm of ssnl, at least in video series.

Anyways, college football season kicked off last night, I'm so pumped. UF/Hawaii airs 12:30 EST on ESPN gameplan for those that have it, or yahoovideo. Not that anyone even likes UF just thought I'd throw it out there. Nebraska plays later that night and I'm happy that the NE games don't conflict with UF ones. I think this week of CFB presents some pretty interesting matchups. Utah/Mich will be fun. Utah is a competitive team that has been consistently solid over the past few years. Michigan is reeling from personnel losses and a system change, and it will be interesting to see how UM's players fit into Rich Rod's program. Alabama/Clemson should be cool too. We'll see if Clemson's line can come together quick against bama. I think this will show if Clemson is a contender or pretender as well. Bama isn't great by any means but they moderately average/above average in the SEC and should be gathering its recruiting classes (highly ranked) together within the next few years.

I want to see UCLA/UTenn on monday night. First and foremost I want to see how good UTenn really is. If they find a QB, UF could be in for a long night. UCLA isn't great either but like Bama, they are a competitive team from a BCS conference. Mizzou/Illinois should be cool too. It'll be fun to see two spread offenses against each other. I think Mizzou will win fairly confidently but if Juice has improved in his passing it should be interesting.

CFB WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO